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This paper aims to debate the technology-driven transformation of customer relationship management (CRM) into social CRM, which entails a shift from a transactional and automational solution to a customer experience management philosophy, reflecting high levels of customer empowerment.

A literature review provides a critical analysis of the concept, tenets, aims and implementation approaches of social CRM. Arguments are summarised by developing a process-based framework for implementing social CRM.

By adopting a value co-creation approach that recognises the technology-fostered customer empowerment, the social CRM highlights the need to immigrate from relationship management to relationship stewardship. In this vein, social CRM implementation should support and foster dialogue facilitation and customer engagement in co-creating customer experiences. To achieve these, five approaches for implementing social CRM are proposed: collecting, analysing and interpreting customer insight; monitoring and improving the performance of CRM; developing holistic and seamless personalised customer experiences; gamifying CRM and loyalty programmes; and nurturing community relationship management.

The five approaches to social CRM implementation are identified and validated based on current industry practices, theoretical arguments and anecdotal evidence of professionals’ perceptions about their outcomes. Future research is required to collect hard evidence showing the business and customer impacts of these approaches.

Social CRM immigrates relationship management from a transactional to a customer experience mindset that treats customers as co-creators of value and demands the tourism and hospitality firms to exploit the affordances of information and communication technologies to collect and analyse customer data for better understanding the customer; develop customer touch points that do not only aim to sell but also primarily aim to enhance the customer interactions and experiences; consider and treat the customers and the customer communities as co-creators, brand ambassadors and stewards of relations; and motivate and enable customer participation into value co-creation processes for developing customer experiences and building relationships.

Research in social CRM is emerging, but it mainly focusses on defining its scope and identifying the functionality and adoption of social CRM technology. The paper contributes to the literature by proposing five specific approaches and a process framework for implementing social CRM. Various directions for future research are also provided.

Tourism literature tends to focus on passive tourists, who constitute the majority of tourists today. However, there is a growing number of individuals who overlap their study, work, and business with tourism activities. These independent tourists have created a new segment in the tourism industry, where tourists develop and experience their own tourism activities. However, there is a lack of current research on these independent tourists, especially in terms of how they function in the experience management process and how this can be translated into various new types of offers.

This study investigates the functions, experiences, and behaviors of this type of tourists. Accordingly, this study makes use of purposive sampling, employing direct observation, in-depth interviews, and analysis of personal social media (e.g., blogs). The findings show that while some independent tourists function in a multitude of ways, from searching for ideas to composing, creating, and experiencing their own products, others are less active and tend to piggyback their efforts on those of more active tourists. The study finds that the motivational matrix is highly important for individuals who combine work and tourism. Working persons with a strong motivation for tourism relative to work maintain high levels of commitment, activity, and creativity in the tourism sphere, especially when they face problems with their work. Highly satisfied independent tourists initiate future actions by either revisiting the same destination or leading others to have similar experiences at the same location. Finally, the chapter discusses some methodological lessons learned from direct observation and in-depth interviews and studying social media.

The purpose of this paper is to study organizational learning from complex and heterogeneous experiences. According to March (2010), this kind of high intellect learning is difficult to accomplish because it requires deliberate investments in knowledge transfer and creation. Zollo and Winter (2002) emphasized how knowledge codification can facilitate this process, as long as it is “well-performed”. However, knowledge management scholars have yet to explore what is meant by well-performed codification and how to achieve it.

This paper addresses this gap and provides a conceptual analysis based on two related but previously disconnected research areas: organizational learning and knowledge management.

This paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, a new understanding of different types of experiences and their effects on learning is proposed. Then the codification process using a critical realist paradigm to overcome the epistemological boundaries of knowledge versus knowing is discussed; in doing so, it is shown that codification can take different forms to be “well-performed”. Finally, appropriate codification strategies based on experience type are identified.

The abstraction-oriented codification outlined in this paper runs counter to the logic of concrete codification that dominates both theory and practice. Thus, going beyond the traditional debate on the degree of codification (i.e. should knowledge be fully codified or just partly codified), this paper introduced a new debate about the appropriate degree of abstraction.

Business process re‐engineering (BPR) is certainly one of the latest buzzwords and is the subject of great interest and also great controversy. Organizations need to shake themselves out of complacency to close competitive gaps and achieve superior performance standards ‐ the reason why many have embarked on huge BPR projects. In view of the high risks associated with radical change, there are, however, many problems associated with BPR. For some BPR is going off the rails before it is properly understood, and many BPR exercises are not delivering the goods. Sometimes, organizations are expecting “quick fixes”, thus displaying their lack of understanding of a complex system. It is unreasonable to expect quick results when so much change is involved, especially when these business processes involve not only machines, but also people. Many believe, such as Mumford, that the management of change is the largest task in re‐engineering. Many people perceive re‐engineering as a threat to both their methods and their jobs. Owing to this recognition, many authors concentrate on the need to take account of the human side of re‐engineering, in particular the management of organizational change.

Process management is becoming an essential part of contemporary organizations in all industries. However, many organizations experience problems during the implementation of a process management approach. The purpose of this paper is to explore and describe the organizational implications when implementing process management, how to handle the relationship between the functional organization and a process perspective, and the roles of managers, teams, and individuals.

A multiple‐case study approach is used to get an extensive picture of and analyze how three Swedish organizations have worked with process management.

The studied organizations have introduced a process management structure into their functional organizational structure, including the introduction of new management positions such as process owners and process leaders. A discourse is identified in earlier research between those arguing for a full transformation from a functionally oriented to a fully process‐oriented organizational structure, and those promoting a more moderate transformation where a process management structure is “matrixed onto” the existing organization. The analysis could be interpreted as supporting the second line of reasoning, where the functional and process structures co‐exist in the organization, creating a constructive dynamic.

The paper provides two major contributions. First, the empirical descriptions and analysis of implementing process management contribute to the knowledge and understanding among both practitioners and researchers. The second major contribution is the identified need of co‐existence of a process and functional perspective, and the implication that complexity is created rather than reduced in organizations.

Many businesses recognise project management as a core competence and seek to deliver benefits to the business through effective management of projects. But how can an organisation know whether its project management processes are adequate? Can a business compare itself with best practice or its competitors? Is there an accepted benchmark for organisational project management capability? The Project Management Maturity Model (ProMMM) has been developed to meet these needs. It describes four levels of increasing project management capability (Naive, Novice, Normalised and Natural), with each ProMMM level further defined in terms of four attributes, namely culture, process, experience and application. It presents a generic benchmarking framework applicable to project‐based organisations in any type of industry, including those responsible for facilities management projects, and does not presume any prior level of project management capability. ProMMM allows organisations to assess their project management capability against agreed criteria, set realistic targets for improvement, and measure progress towards enhanced capability. This paper outlines the structure of the ProMMM framework, and presents a case study where ProMMM has been used to support development of effective project management.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the power of using poetry as a process of critical reflection and organisational analysis in the management process. It intends to bring to life Armstrong's concepts of “organisation‐in‐the‐mind” and use critical role analysis in the interactions between manager and member of staff.

This is a qualitative, interpretive study using first and second person inquiry. Poems are created from the experiences of two organisational members in dialogue in relation to their roles and focus on specific decision‐making critical incidents within the life of the organisation. The creation of poetry is used as a form of communication and provides a focus for thematic analysis of key organisational themes and issues.

The creative use of poetry to illuminate unconscious processes and organisational issues has enabled revitalised working relationships and a new perspective on the organisational dynamic. The critical incidents and surrounding events caused considerable emotional discomfort. Writing in the form of poetry enabled a finding of voice, increased personal learning, and new insights in relation to roles, management processes of decision‐making and interpersonal dynamics in the organisation.

This paper contributes to understanding the importance of unconscious processes in gaining an understanding of organisational dynamics and management processes. These processes are brought to light through the creation of poetry to sit alongside rational modes of understanding and analysis.

The approach is under‐developed and largely unrecognised in relation to management processes. Reflection and analysis through the use of poetry offers an important contribution to the work of organisational analysis.

The purpose of this study is to give an in-depth understanding of the nature of business processes (BPs) from the perspective of their dynamism and knowledge intensity that will allow for their correct classification and provide practical and useful implications for their more relevant and effective management. A simple and low labor-intensive BP nature assessment approach is proposed that will allow for objective assessment and internal benchmarking of all BPs in a specific context of execution based on their nature.

The research is divided into two parts. The first comprises a systematic literature review (SLR) based on the resources of the ProQuest, Springer Nature and ScienceDirect full-text databases and the second includes illustrative case studies.

Building on the SLR, the authors identified and reviewed 3,385 articles and defined a set of criteria by which the nature of BPs can be assessed. Further, the authors proposed a BP nature assessment matrix together with complementary questionnaires for the evaluation of process dynamism and knowledge intensity. To demonstrate the logic of this approach, two illustrative case studies were presented.

The article contributes to the theoretical reflection on the nature of BPs in the knowledge economy. From the practical point of view, a novel approach to the assessment of the nature of BPs is offered. The approach is open and as experience is accumulated it will develop according to the data and recommendations collected.

This paper aims to analyse the idea that experience acts as an antecedent in divestiture and triggers an organisational learning process that enables the divesting firm to convert experience into knowledge, increasing the probability that a firm will undertake subsequent divestitures.

The approach is quantitative. The research project used a case–control design, with a sample consisting of 274 divesting and non-divesting firms. Given the dichotomous nature of the dependent variable, the relations of the research model are tested using logistic regression.

The likelihood of a divestiture increases when firms have already had past experience of divestitures. Firm performance and firm size act as moderating variables, that is, the learning effects are weaker in firms with better past performance and also in larger firms.

The study contributes to the literature on organisational learning and divestiture. In particular, the knowledge obtained from previous divestitures is positively related to subsequent ones. The results on firm size and performance as contingency factors make it possible to distinguish between the different learning mechanisms in proactive and reactive divestitures, as well as in larger and smaller firms. Accordingly, a two-level framework of experience and knowledge is proposed.

The results are of interest for practitioners who need a better understanding of the antecedents of their strategic actions in terms of past experience and knowledge. The study also offers insights into the knowledge management practices that fit into the proposed two-level framework of knowledge accumulation.

The originality of the study consists in the strong evidence of learning effects in divestitures that it finds. This study augments a promising line of research on the effect of experience in rare strategic decisions, enriching our understanding of the learning mechanisms associated with complex experiences.

Strategy scholars have theorized that a firm's strategic leaders play an important role in firm dynamic capabilities (DCs). However, little research to date has studied how leaders shape the development of DCs. This inductive theory-building study sheds new light on the multilevel architecture of DCs by uncovering that the three core DCs – sensing, seizing, and reconfiguring – operate through distinct individual, group, and organizational processes. Further, the role of strategic leadership is critical as organizational processes create DCs only when they are purposefully designed by firms' strategic leaders to enable change and opportunity pursuit. Whether strategic leaders design processes for change and opportunity pursuit, in turn, reflects the extent to which they view change as positive and desirable. Our insights about the role of strategic leaders' positive attitude toward change as an important aspect of firm DCs uncover new interconnections between strategic leadership, organizational design, and the micro-foundations of DCs. Collectively our findings about the role of positive attitude toward change, the purposeful design of processes for change, and the varying manifestations of these processes at different levels of analysis reveal the coupling of strategic and organizational processes in enabling strategic dynamism and change.